St. Anthony's Roman Catholic Church, 2 Willowfield Cresent, Belfast, County Antrim, BT6 8HP

St. Anthony's Roman Catholic Church is a large, free-standing Gothic Revival stone church with a square bell-tower, built between 1936 and 1938 to designs by the Belfast-based architect Padraic Gregory (1886–1967). Gregory was a prolific designer of Catholic churches across Ireland, and was also known as a poet and art critic. The church stands on the west side of Woodstock Road, east of Belfast city centre, set on an east-west axis on a large site between Willowfield Parade and Willowfield Crescent in the townland of Ballymacarrett.

The building was constructed by P & F McConnell of Belfast using Ballycullen stone and was designed as a Neo-Gothic church capable of accommodating a congregation of 800. The stained glass windows were supplied by Earley & Co. of Dublin. Construction began on 20 April 1936, following the laying of the foundation stone in June 1936, and the church was opened on 16 October 1938 after a disrupted building period.

The plan comprises a double-height nave with clerestory and side chapels, a three-stage square bell-tower with a polygonal stair-bay to the north, a baptistery to the south, a sacristy and robing room to the west, and entrance porches to both north and south. The roof is pitched natural slate with raised stone skews and kneelers, cross finials, and cast-iron ogee rainwater goods on moulded eaves with a dentilled eaves course. The external walls are of uncoursed sandstone with a chamfered plinth and pinnacled buttresses with masonry offsets and caps. Throughout, windows are pointed-arch-headed, cusped, leaded and stained glass set in ashlar surrounds with chamfered sills, unless otherwise noted.

The east elevation features a gabled vestibule with a slightly projecting entrance porch at ground floor, flanked by diagonal buttresses and containing paired entrance doors set within a Romanesque-style stone portal. The replacement double-leaf timber-panelled doors have Gothic transom lights divided and flanked by colonnettes on chamfered bases. At the tympanum is a stone statue of the Virgin and Child on a stone plinth, with a carved Latin inscription over a chamfered archivolt with hood mould. At gallery level is a four-paned Gothic tracery window with hood mould and stops, surmounted by a diminutive opening.

The south elevation is seven sets of paired windows wide at clerestory level. At the far right is the baptistery, which has three small windows; to its left is an adjoining section two sets of paired windows wide. A projecting entrance porch occupies the left of centre, containing a Gothic-headed double-leaf timber-panelled door opening to the south and having a window to the east elevation. To the left of centre is a side chapel projecting further forward, four sets of paired windows wide with a parapet. At the far left is the sacristy, which has two sets of paired windows and a metal-sheeted door accessed by three enclosed masonry steps. The west elevation is four windows wide and contains a multi-paned Gothic tracery window.

The north elevation is seven sets of paired windows wide at clerestory level. The three-stage bell-tower abuts the elevation left of centre, and is itself abutted to the north by the projecting entrance porch. To the far left is an almost full-height polygonal stair-bay with a lower adjoining section. The side chapel and the lower sacristy lie to the right of the tower. The bell-tower has a small window over the porch on the north elevation, a window to the second stage, and three louvred openings to the belfry on all four sides, surmounted by a dentilled frieze and a castellated parapet with corner pinnacles. The north entrance porch has a replacement Gothic-headed timber-panelled door in a chamfered recess under a stepped gable with a carved stone cross to the centre, and a window to the east elevation. To the east of this porch, metal railings and a latch gate enclose steps leading to the undercroft. The two-storey polygonal stair-bay at the far left has irregularly arranged windows at each floor. The adjoining section is two sets of paired windows wide. The side chapel to the right of the tower is four sets of paired windows wide. The sacristy has a set of paired windows to either side of a slightly projecting entrance bay, which contains a double-leaf timber-panelled door with a Gothic-headed transom light, accessed by three enclosed masonry steps.

The interior is relatively well preserved in the Gothic Revival style.

The church is set on a large, lawned site with mature trees to three sides. To the west is a row of modern housing and stone boundary walling. The remaining three sides are enclosed by a curved stone boundary wall topped by cast-iron railings with fleur-de-lis detailing, and ashlar stone piers with decorative pinnacled caps. To the north and east are cast-iron gates on polygonal stone piers with dentilled and moulded cornices and carved cross detailing to the shafts.

Historically, St. Anthony's was the second Roman Catholic chapel to be built in Ballymacarrett, which until the 1930s had been served solely by St. Matthew's Parish Church on the Newtownards Road. Expansion of the Catholic congregation in the area had prompted plans for a new church from as early as the 1910s, but financial difficulties delayed progress for nearly two decades. A temporary mass house was built in the Willowfield area in 1931 at a cost of £1,300, later converted to use as the Parochial Hall. St. Anthony's was originally part of the Parish of St. Matthew's, but in 1955 it was separated and constituted a parish in its own right. A new parochial house was completed in December 1957. The church escaped damage during the Belfast Blitz of 1941, though an arson attack in the 1970s caused damage to the front of the building; it was subsequently sympathetically restored. The church was first listed in 1990 and celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2008.